Monsters Are Real.

~1~

"Raze, on the count of three I'm going to need you to run. 3...2...1, run!" I yelled, watching my wolf friend Raze run off. The man standing in front of me growled, pointing his laser gun at me. He watched Raze run away in a gray blur, a dash of brown on him from the vest he was wearing. The man's scowl faded into a malicious smirk.

"Wolf-boy may have run away but I still have you, Mr. Lexter," The man said, aiming the gun at my forehead. "No longer will you disturb the peace of this neighborhood. Make one move and I'll blow your head into smithereens."

I rose a brow. "So I'm disturbing the peace? I personally would call it trying to survive. I'm trying to find food. What you and your men provide is literally and figuratively slop. I can't eat that, and I have no money to buy anything extra." A deep red spread through my face, showing my not-so hidden anger. The man slowly hovered his finger over the trigger.

"Oh shut your trap! Nobody cares!" With that I shut up. I wasn't ready to get my head shot off, not quite yet anyway. Now as calm as I could be at the moment, I tried to come up with a plan. Eventually I came up with something. I smirked slightly.

'This is gonna be fun,' I think to myself. I look the man in the eye, my smirk widening a bit. With a swift swipe of my right foot, I kick him in the nuts. The man collapsed, finding himself in too much pain to even cry out. As he fell he pulled the trigger, a bright red laser almost touching me and blowing my head off. I duck, watching a tree explode into a light show of orange, red, and yellow behind me.

"Th-That could've been my head." I breathe out, shuddering. I eventually snap out of my shock. I look down at the man, my smirk coming back. "Goodbye mother fucker, haha!" I stuck my tongue out at him and ran off after Raze.

I am Hinge Lexter, a sixteen year old boy that's been living in an abandoned coffee shop for the past four years. At the age of ten my mother was hunted down by Him. Him is an unnamed killer that works with the government to get rid of anyone that gets on it's nerves. For some reason my mother qualified for that list. So, basically she was killed by an unnamed person for unknown reasons. The government is fucked up.

The day I turned nine was the day that they came. This new government is completely made of shape shifting aliens, or even more simply put, shape shifters. They came from another planet outside of the milky way galaxy after it had been over populated. Makes sense, they multiply like bunnies. Over the next six years that Raze and I were living alone they had destroyed all the major cities in the world, slowly re- building to make it their own city. Each of these rebuilt cities have a shape shifter leader.

The man that was trying to capture us was named Ivan. He's the leader of New York City, and has been after Raze and I since I was twelve and he was ten.

Speaking of Raze, the two of us met when my mother first died. I had ran away from home, trying to escape having the same dreadful fate as my mother. After  about an hour of running through the woods I collapsed under a large oak tree, crying my eyes out. My hair has been soaked by both sweat and the falling rain. Just barely through the sound of the rain was I able to hear a quiet whimpering sound. I followed the sound to a hole, where I found an eight year old Raze pup stuck. I carefully pulled him out and helped him to a nearby cave to ask him what had happened.

To my surprise he actually responded, claiming that he had fallen from a tree and into the hole. He couldn't remember anything from before that.

To this day I still haven't truly questioned Raze's verbal abilities. He's a wolf who can talk, but at this point I have seen weirder things.

Now back to the story at hand. I continued to run, and fast. So fast in fact that it felt like I was floating. I passed the park, with the pond that we bathe in. We would normally sneak there every other night to bathe, anymore than that and we'd be caught by Ivan and his shape shifting guards.

Eventually, I got to the coffee shop that we've been living in. It was a dull blue building, that was definitely worn down. The balcony from the second floor had fallen over the front of the building, blocking the large front window, and front entrance. When I walk past the front of the building I can just barely see whats left of a garden.

I sigh softly, walking around the building to the alley next to it. "Home sweet home,"I mutter under my breath, walking through the side door into the main kitchen of the building. I walk through it to the dining area, finding Raze staring at the rubble through the smashed window.

"Hey Raze, I'm home," I say, sitting next to the fourteen year old wolf. He yelped a bit, jumping almost two feet into the air from fear. When he landed he fell onto his back.

"God damn it, Hinge! You fucking scared me!" He yelled, sitting up. He used his paw to adjust his goggles.

"Sorry, you just seemed so vulnerable," I admit, helping him fix them. I sigh. "I don't get why you wear these damn things." I mumble. He simply rolled his deep blue eyes, ignoring that. I sigh, studying him. His eyes reminded me of the ocean. His fur a cloudy day. To be honest, Raze himself reminds me of nature.

Me on the other hand, I'm plain. My hair is brown, and it goes down to the middle of my neck. I should get a hair cut but the only salons there are are for shape shifters. My eyes are a bright yellow. Raze says that they remind him of the sun, to me they remind me of pee. Raze says that I need to see a doctor if my pee is that color. Oh well. My face is pretty generic, small nose, round eyes, thin lips. Normal stuff.

The clothes that I wear are almost all the same. White shirt, jeans, brown jacket, and most importantly, my amulet. I wear it for two reasons:

1. It's the only thing I have to remember my mother.

2. It helps me keep my shadow inside.

By shadow I mean the entity that I have inherited. All the male   Lexters have this entity that they inherit. It gives our shadow a mins of it's own. To be honest, it doesn't change me at all, it just makes it difficult to sleep because I don't ever take it off. I'm not going to risk it.

Raze sighs.

"Hinge, it's getting late. I think we should go to bed before any of the gang members from the bar across the street see the lights on in the coffee shop," he suggested. I nod in agreement.

"Yeah in one minute, I have a couple of questions for you though."

He perks up at the word questions. "Go ahead. Ask away."

"Why don't you ever take off your goggles or vest? To be honest when it comes to your goggles you don't ever put then over your eyes. What's the point of wearing them?"

"I may be covered in fur, but I  feel naked without my vest and goggles," he says with a sigh. He then stood up. "Alright. I'm off to sleep now, we'll find more food tomorrow." He nuzzled my arm then hopped up the ladder to the second floor. The balcony may have broken but the rest of that floor was still in one piece.

I follow him up, lying on my side of the mattress. It had been less than a minute and Raze was already fast asleep, snoring soft. He was snuggling into the blanket. I smile at him, closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep next to him.

____________________________________

I awake to the loud crash of pots and pans from the kitchen downstairs. I sit up, looking next to me to find Raze still sound asleep. If he wasn't making the noise than who was? A thought suddenly went through my mind: intruders.

"Raze. Raze wake up," I whisper, nudging him awake.

"Hm...Hinge. What is it?" He mumbles, sitting up and yawning. He stretches.

"I think someones in the kitchen." I start to get up as I say that, heading for the ladder. Raze gulps, getting up and following me over. We both quickly and quietly go down, tip toeing to the kitchen. Raze then froze, hearing foot steps behind us.

The next thing he knew he was on the ground, unconscious. I go to scream but eventually get hit in the head with a baseball bat. The last thing I see is darkness and stars.